‘Wright Brothers Moment for Space’
March 24th, 2017Via: Bloomberg:
If the rocket Elon Musk’s SpaceX expects to launch next week looks familiar, that’s because it is.
The Falcon 9 rocket slated to take off from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, has flown before, marking the first time Space Exploration Technologies Corp. will refly one of the 14-story-tall boosters it recovered from past missions. The reused rocket will ferry a communications satellite into orbit for Luxembourg-based SES SA, SpaceX’s first commercial customer, and signals a leap forward in Musk’s 15-year-quest to drive down launch costs and eventually create a human colony on Mars.
“This is a Wright Brothers moment for space,” said Phil Larson, a former space policy adviser to President Barack Obama who worked for SpaceX and is now at the University of Colorado. “It’s as important as the first plane taking off and landing and taking off again.”
